Podcasts – The Official Anais Nin Bloghttp://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com
News and Information about Anais NinWed, 20 Feb 2019 20:03:04 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=5.0.3Anaïs Nin Podcast 34: How A Café in Space was bornhttp://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2019/02/anais-nin-podcast-34-how-a-cafe-in-space-was-born/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=anais-nin-podcast-34-how-a-cafe-in-space-was-born
http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2019/02/anais-nin-podcast-34-how-a-cafe-in-space-was-born/#respondSun, 17 Feb 2019 17:19:05 +0000http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/?p=3800In 2003, 100 years after the birth of Anaïs Nin, the first volume of the only current literary journal dedicated to Nin was born too. It came on the heels of the demise of ANAIS: An International Journal after its editor, Gunther Stuhlmann, died in 2002, before he was able to produce a special centennial issue the following year.

Paul Herron, a frequent contributor to ANAIS, was devastated by the loss of his friend and mentor, not to mention the fact that a huge void in Nin studies had suddenly opened up. Only a few months later, Herron attended a Lawrence Durrell conference in Ottawa, Canada, where he was approached by another of his mentors, Roger Jackson, the Miller publisher who inspired him to produce Anaïs Nin: A Book of Mirrors (1996), and encouraged him to think about filling the gap in Nin scholarship himself. At first, the idea intimidated him because of his deep respect for Stuhlmann’s work, something he felt was untouchable. But certain travels and events soon changed his mind, some of which is revealed here for the first time.

]]>http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2019/02/anais-nin-podcast-34-how-a-cafe-in-space-was-born/feed/0Podcast 33: Understanding the Art of Anaïs Nin: Incesthttp://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/10/podcast-33-understanding-the-art-of-anais-nin-incest/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=podcast-33-understanding-the-art-of-anais-nin-incest
http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/10/podcast-33-understanding-the-art-of-anais-nin-incest/#commentsThu, 11 Oct 2018 19:17:31 +0000http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/?p=3785I am currently at work on a book of correspondence between Anaïs Nin and her father, Joaquín Nin, written between 1933 and 1940, titled Father Letters, and a friend of mine who was reading a draft suggested I revisit a post I did three years ago on the topic of incest as related to Nin and her work. So I did, and I was inspired to create a podcast about it.

As many of you know, Anaïs was abandoned by her father when she was ten years old and spent much of her childhood yearning for him. The circumstances under which he left the family were horrific—he was engaged in an affair with one of his piano students, at the time barely sixteen years old (and an occasional playmate of Anaïs), and his jealousy-fueled battles with his wife Rosa led to true domestic violence, even to the point where Anaïs screamed at her father to stop beating her mother because she was afraid he was going to kill her. He not only beat his wife, but his children as well, leading them up to a dark, cramped attic where he spanked them while his wife was sobbing on the stairway, having been locked out.

Joaquin Nin, ca. 1930

This unimaginable cruelty and physical abuse left a permanent scar on the young Anaïs, and yet the idea that she was suddenly without a father traumatized her even more. She began her diary as a desperate plea to lure him back—but she would not see him for another decade, in a brief meeting in Paris that ended in rage and further estrangement. Then, in 1933, Joaquín expressed a desire to reunite with his now-thirty-year-old daughter, and she accepted his request. For several months, the two engaged in an incestuous affair, something Anaïs wrote about graphically and yet eloquently in her diary. The affair, which ended bitterly, was also an inspiration for some of Anaïs’s most important art (obliquely in The House of Incest, fictionally in The Winter of Artifice), and it flavored much of what she wrote from that point on. It also heavily influenced her choice of men and the types of relationships she had with them.

In order to truly understand the art of Anaïs Nin, one must deal with a taboo that many find distasteful, immoral, or entirely sad. The ending of Father Letters is truly tragic. But the incest must be dealt with, and that is the subject of the latest Anaïs Nin Podcast. Father Letters will answer many questions about this topic, but in the meantime, here is my take on it.

Run time: 13:30
To listen to the podcast with iTunes, click here.
To listen without iTunes, click here.

]]>http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/10/podcast-33-understanding-the-art-of-anais-nin-incest/feed/2The Fate of an Anais Nin Portraithttp://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/08/the-fate-of-an-anais-nin-portrait/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-fate-of-an-anais-nin-portrait
http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/08/the-fate-of-an-anais-nin-portrait/#respondFri, 31 Aug 2018 11:51:16 +0000http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/?p=3773This is a story about how working on the forthcoming book Father Letters: Correspondence between Anaïs and Joaquín Nin, 1933-1940 inspired a quest to locate what I thought was a long-lost portrait of Anaïs Nin.

In one of Joaquín’s letters to Anaïs, dated Sept. 6, 1933, he expresses gratitude for two items his daughter had sent him: one was a photograph, and the other was a small reproduction of a portrait of Anaïs by Nastashia Troubetskioa (aka Princess Natasha Troubetskoi). About the portrait, Joaquín says:

There is a good resemblance in your portrait: the similarity of movement of both hands was unfortunate, but the whole is extremely attractive. Despite the fur coat, we can guess the “grace” of the body and all its finesse. And it is slightly “slavic.” One would want to call you Anaïscha Ninskaya Guilerova…!

In a letter dated the next day, he said:

Your little Russian portrait is there where I can see it; you seem to be observing the procession of a fiancé that Madame Troubetskoia has offered you so you can reign legally…and as such you seem to lack what you really need.

I had seen photographs in some of Anaïs Nin’s diaries and other Nin-related publications, in which she sits in front of the finished portrait. Naturally, I began to wonder about its fate—who owns it? Does it even still exist?

I did a little research and found that on January 23, 1929, Anaïs Nin wrote in her diary:

Visited Princess Troubetskoi, who is a painter and decorator. I had heard of her furniture and wanted to see it for my future home. While I admired the furniture she admired me: “You have a dream face. I must paint you, like that, in your sapphire-blue coat against the background of my chair (her own work, copper designed with figures of a Pushkin legend and inlaid with colored stones). You like this furniture? Pure Russian. No—all Russian wouldn’t do for you, too heavy. Russian-Oriental. Yes, a delicate Oriental. When will you come? I am going to get a canvas right now” (Early Diary of Anaïs Nin 1927-1931, p. 157).

The next day, Anaïs wrote:

The Princess has made a deep impression on me—her enthusiasm, frankness, her genius for color and decoration, the quality of her mind, her love of legends, her understanding of sadness. […] What I feel in her studio has a stronger hold upon my imagination than any other emotion (Early Diary of Anaïs Nin 1927-1931, p. 157).

On January 26, 1929, she added:

I am too occupied with the Princess and almost too happy to find out she has very few friends and that she wants me to “come upstairs as often as possible” because I fit into her background (Early Diary of Anaïs Nin 1927-1931, p. 159) and Every morning I posed for the Princess (Early Diary of Anaïs Nin 1927-1931, p. 161).

Anais Nin and Nastashia Troubetskoia, 1929, Paris

Shortly after the massive portrait was finished, both Anaïs and Nastashia Troubetskioa posed for a small photoshoot, and the photo of Anaïs sitting next to the painting was one of them.

But what happened to the portrait?

I googled the artist’s name, which is listed in later diary entries as “Natashia Troubetskoia,” and went to images: Among the dozens of images, I saw was one in color, which stood out because all the others were black and white. Next, I visited the source of the image and was shocked to learn that it was the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington D. C., just down the freeway from where I live. First, I was relieved that it still exists, and second, I found out that it is among their non-displayed collection, meaning they had it, but it was kept in their archives and was not available for public view.

There was no way that this painting and I were not going to be in the same place at the same time, so I immediately called and asked for a private viewing.

I was asked all the questions one would expect: Who are you? Why do you want to view the painting? What are your credentials? What are your intentions?

When I replied that I am a Nin publisher and had come across Joaquín’s comments in the father letters, I was put in touch with Dorothy Moss, who is the Curator of Painting and Sculpture, and the Coordinating Curator of the Smithsonian Women’s History Initiative, which I was unaware of up to that point.

Dorothy was more than helpful: she arranged a private viewing on a sunny summer weekday morning. We came too early and were told to wait outside, and I noticed more than one side-eye from the security people; but once the clock hit 9:00, we were allowed back in and introduced to Jennifer Wodzianski, the Smithsonian Registrar of Collections, who acted as our guide. We were practically the only people in the mammoth gallery, since the doors don’t open to the public until 11:00 AM, so the trip through a labyrinth of hallways and up an elevator was sort of surreal.

Then, we entered what looked like a store room, and there it was: The six-foot tall Troubestkoia portrait, the color and texture of which was stunning. No photograph can reveal the three-dimensional quality of the painting; thick applications of oil seemed to have one purpose: to permit the face of the then-26-year-old Anaïs Nin to practically leap out of the canvas. When I stood near the visage, I had the feeling that it is a living thing, that the eyes can see, and that the smile is intended for whoever views it. I’m no art expert, but I can say that I have never seen a painting like it anywhere. It profoundly affected me. I practically had to be pried away from it; the only reason I allowed this to happen is because it was apparent that the other people in the room had other things to do—it is the Smithsonian, after all.

The obvious question for me was: Will the portrait ever be displayed? It had been purchased from a private collector in Paris in 2000; but here’s the kicker: the collector had purchased it in the 1980s at an antiques fair in Ile de Chatou, a White Russian enclave, which is just west of Paris and only a few miles from the village where Anaïs once lived, Louveciennes.

So, will it be displayed? As of today, no one has a definitive answer, but there are two facts that have to be considered: One, thousands of dollars have been spent to restore it; Two, thousands more are being spent to frame it. The logical conclusion is that yes, it will be on display for the public, otherwise such an investment (the original purchase , the restoration and the framing) would never have been made.

The question now seems to be not if, but when. I, for one, will keep you posted. And I wonder if you will have the same reaction I had when you finally see it in person.

To listen to a 9-minute podcast about this topic with iTunes, click here.

Click on this image to see the Smithsonian information on the portrait

]]>http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/08/the-fate-of-an-anais-nin-portrait/feed/0Podcast 31: Evelyn Hinz, Anaïs Nin’s “official” biographer with Steven Reignshttp://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/04/podcast-31-evelyn-hinz-anais-nins-official-biographer-with-steven-reigns/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=podcast-31-evelyn-hinz-anais-nins-official-biographer-with-steven-reigns
http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/04/podcast-31-evelyn-hinz-anais-nins-official-biographer-with-steven-reigns/#respondFri, 06 Apr 2018 13:55:06 +0000http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/?p=3743Mystery has surrounded the never-produced biography that Canadian scholar Evelyn Hinz was appointed by Anaïs Nin to do for decades. Why did it never appear? Why was a single page never shown? And where is it today? Did it ever exist? Los Angeles poet and educator—and Nin aficionado—Steven Reigns wanted to know, so some years after Hinz’s death, he approached her widower, John Teunissen, who graciously granted Steven an interview in which he answered his questions and also dropped a bombshell in the process. There were plenty of politics, bad blood, intrigue and some radical decisions made by both Teunissen and The Anaïs Nin Trust that few know about.

Steven Reigns is a Los Angeles-based poet, educator, and was appointed the first City Poet of West Hollywood. He organized three of the largest Anaïs Nin events in the past twenty years, one being “Anaïs Nin @ 105” at the Hammer Museum in 2008 and most recently he co-produced “The Allure of Anaïs Nin” at Antioch University Santa Barbara. He has published dozens of chapbooks, poetry collections, and edited four anthologies. He holds a BA in Creative Writing from USF, a Master of Clinical Psychology from Antioch University, and is an eleven-time recipient of LA City’s Department of Cultural Affairs’ Artist in Residency Grant program. He edited My Life is Poetry, featuring his students in the first-ever autobiographical poetry workshop for LGBT seniors, and has taught writing workshops around the country to LGBT youth and people living with HIV. Visit him at www.stevenreigns.com.

]]>http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/04/podcast-31-evelyn-hinz-anais-nins-official-biographer-with-steven-reigns/feed/0Anaïs Nin Podcast 30: Gonzalo Moré and Helba Huarahttp://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/02/anais-nin-podcast-30-gonzalo-more-and-helba-huara/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=anais-nin-podcast-30-gonzalo-more-and-helba-huara
http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/02/anais-nin-podcast-30-gonzalo-more-and-helba-huara/#commentsTue, 27 Feb 2018 22:18:27 +0000http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/?p=3730To kick off the celebration of the 15th and final issue of A Café in Space, California artist and historian Eduardo Pineda discusses his two articles, “The Dreaming Tiger—On Gonzalo Moré” and “La Gitana—On Helba Huara,” which reveal the secrets and long-lost memories of Nin’s Peruvian lover Gonzalo Moré and his wife, the dancer Helba Huara.

Helba Huara and Anais Nin, 1936. Photo: Emile Savitry

As anyone who has read Nin’s 1930s and 1940s diaries knows, Nin met Gonzalo Moré at a party and was swept off her feet by his astounding presence, his Latin passion, and his utter bohemianism. When Nin visited Moré at his Paris apartment, she was shocked to find that he and his wife Helba were living in utter squalor. Once Nin and Moré commenced their decade-long love affair, she felt compelled to help him and Helba escape their sickly existence by giving them money for a new apartment, for food and medicine—Helba, at this time, had just fallen into a mélange of illnesses that incapacitated her and ended her once-celebrated dance career. While Huara was grateful for Nin’s financial support, she resented her presence in her husband’s live, and almost immediately a hate-infested relationship developed between the three of them. For ten years, it was a war between carnal passion and almost insane jealousy and hatred, a war in which the dark side eventually ultimately destroyed the Nin-Moré relationship in 1946. But before it ended, Nin and Moré founded the Gemor Press in New York to not only print Nin’s books, but also to provide Moré with a source of income. While the press produced several true works of art, Moré’s lack of discipline and Helba’s increasing demands on him for constant care rendered him unable to fulfill his duties as a printer.

Ironically, Moré came from a prominent Peruvian family and was due a significant inheritance. In order to save their relationship, Nin offered to send Moré back to Peru to get his inheritance, but his pride would not let him go—he was horrified by the idea of how his family would react to his sorry state of affairs and never went back.

Once the affair ended—and it ended bitterly—there were few entries in Nin’s diaries about Moré and Huara, and we, the readers, like Nin, lose track of them. There was confusion about how Moré and Huara left the country, when, and what happened next. Even the death date attributed to Moré in the published diaries (1966) turns out to be off by seven years.

But now, the lack of information and the mysteries have been in great part solved by Pineda’s dogged detective work, which has taken over twenty years. We find out how Moré and Huara met each other, how they had a daughter who Nin believed was Moré’s niece, and the incredible success Huara had as a performer of Peruvian indigenous dances, even to the point where she and Moré (who accompanied Huara on piano) appeared in New York City during the 1920s. We also discover that Huara was about to be awarded a national U.S. tour just as she fell ill, and how her plans for a return to dance many years later were tragically ended with an accident.

Listen as Eduardo Pineda reveals these details of the lives of these two once-famed but now enigmatic artists.

]]>http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2018/02/anais-nin-podcast-30-gonzalo-more-and-helba-huara/feed/3Podcast 29: Anaïs Nin’s Lost World with Britt Arenanderhttp://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2017/12/podcast-29-anais-nins-lost-world-with-britt-arenander/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=podcast-29-anais-nins-lost-world-with-britt-arenander
http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2017/12/podcast-29-anais-nins-lost-world-with-britt-arenander/#respondFri, 01 Dec 2017 13:58:52 +0000http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/?p=3713Swedish author Britt Arenander discusses the new English language version of her Anaïs Nin’s Lost World: Paris in Words and Pictures, 1924-1939, which is in now in print. Lost World contains more than 50 photographs, many of them vintage, of Anaïs Nin’s and Henry Miller’s favorite haunts and living quarters in and around Paris during the most interesting period of their lives. Included is a concise but thorough guide through the streets of Paris.

Hotel Orphila, immortalized by August Strindberg

As Arenander says, the book was a labor of love and required a great deal of detective work to retrace Nin’s steps as she visited the places described in the 1920s and 1930s diaries. Astoundingly, most of them still exist, and some retain the ambience that Nin and Miller enjoyed some 85 years ago.

And there are surprises: Nin, shortly after moving to Paris in the 1920s, unwittingly inhabited a room at Hotel Orphila, which the writer August Strindberg made famous in the late 1800s. The brothel Nin mentions in Henry and June is still located at 32 rue Blondel and is still a brothel. The lawn furniture Arenander photographed in the yard of the famed Louveciennes house was there as early as 1910, evidenced by a rare photograph of the owner reclining on the same chaise that was photographed 80 years later. The street where Henry Miller and Alfred Perlès lived in Clichy was immortalized in a post card from 1932—which includes their apartment building.

Arenander also dispels the myth about why Nin was denied entrance to her former Louveciennes home in 1971, as revealed by a conversation with the owner, the reputed Monsieur Auzépy, the very man who allowed the house to lay empty and crumbling for decades.

]]>http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2017/12/podcast-29-anais-nins-lost-world-with-britt-arenander/feed/0Podcast 28: A brief history of journals dedicated to Anaïs Ninhttp://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2017/09/podcast-28-a-brief-history-of-journals-dedicated-to-anais-nin/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=podcast-28-a-brief-history-of-journals-dedicated-to-anais-nin
http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2017/09/podcast-28-a-brief-history-of-journals-dedicated-to-anais-nin/#commentsFri, 01 Sep 2017 14:05:33 +0000http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/?p=3701Until after Anaïs Nin published her blockbuster Diary of Anaïs Nin in 1966, there had been very few critical studies of her work. One notable exception was Oliver Evans’ article “Anaïs Nin and the Discovery of Inner Space” in the Fall 1962 issue of Prairie Schooner. His book-length analysis didn’t appear until 1968, but soon thereafter, scholars such as Richard Centing, Benjamin FranklinV, Duane Schneider, Philip K. Jason, and Evelyn Hinz began to take Nin’s work seriously and wrote about it.

Centing and Franklin were the co-founders and co-editors of the first periodical dedicated to Nin, which they called Under the Sign of Pisces: Anaïs Nin and her Circle, a quarterly that debuted at the beginning of 1970.

Inaugural issue of Under the Sign of Pisces

Nin was a tough critic of those who critiqued her work; Oliver Evans was a victim of her dissatisfaction, as was, eventually, Benjamin Franklin V. Franklin says that he was “fired” by Centing in 1973 at the bequest of Nin. The reasons are explained in Episode 28 of The Anaïs Nin Podcast.

Pisces had a long run, ending in 1981, after which the void was filled by Gunther Stuhlmann’s ANAIS: An International Journal. The story behind how this journal came to be and lasted for 19 annual issues is related by Paul Herron, who knew Stuhlmann personally, and who was inspired to create the most recent Nin journal, A Café in Space.

Herron details how Café came to be, who has been in its pages, how by pure luck he was able to include Janet Fitch (White Oleander) in the first annual volume, and attempts to explain why volume 15 (2018) will be the last.

]]>http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2017/09/podcast-28-a-brief-history-of-journals-dedicated-to-anais-nin/feed/1Podcast 27: Anaïs Nin’s ‘Auletris’ is now an audiobookhttp://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2017/07/podcast-27-anais-nins-auletris-is-now-an-audiobook/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=podcast-27-anais-nins-auletris-is-now-an-audiobook
http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2017/07/podcast-27-anais-nins-auletris-is-now-an-audiobook/#respondMon, 10 Jul 2017 17:57:09 +0000http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/?p=3691Episode 27 of the Anaïs Nin Podcast is live. Listen to erotica reader Thurlow Holmes describing her experience reading Nin’s Auletris: Eroticafor the new audiobook, just released on audible.com, Amazon and iTunes.

“This was one of the first books that I just read out loud, as I was reading it,” Holmes says in an interview with the book’s editor, Paul Herron. “I was taking this as it came at me, so I could imagine myself in a room with the characters.”

“Anaïs Nin’s words just roll off the page, so you get wrapped up in the moment,” she added.

What sets this podcast apart is a steamy audio excerpt from the first story in the section of Auletris entitled “Life in Provincetown,” during which a lushly-lipped model is making love in studio that is separated by a thin wall behind which, unbeknownst to her, was a young Portuguese sailor listening intently and using his imagination to picture what was being done to her by the nature of the sounds she was uttering.

Holmes was surprised to find out how she got the reading part in the first place, which was a series of events that almost killed the entire production, with the contract being signed on the very day after which Sky Blue Press’s audio rights to the book would have lapsed. “Isn’t it serendipitous how things fall apart, the pieces fall into place and click, and here we are with this wonderful book for your listeners to enjoy,” says Holmes. “Here’s our happy ending,” she joked.

The audiobook version of Auletrisruns 2 hours and 49 minutes and can be found on:

As the title of the diary suggests, this is the story of how Nin was able to pull off what was—and still is—the seemingly impossible feat of maintaining two men, two homes, two lives on opposite sides of the continent without either man knowing about the other. The idea that Nin’s husband, Hugh Guiler, know about Nin’s lover, Rupert Pole, is debunked. With the help of loyal friends, including Guiler’s maid, and countless fabrications, explanations, fictional employers and assignments, she was able to spend about half the year, on and off, with each man and live within two completely opposing worlds. New York was the center of art world and internationalism, high-energy, and Nin moved in vast social circles, living what she called a “big life” with Guiler. In California, she was with Pole, a forest ranger, in a cabin at the foot of the mountains in Sierra Madre, a sleepy town disconnected from the rest of the world, in the middle of nature, and the pace was almost impossibly slow. Each man had his attributes that Nin found irresistible, and yet each man’s negative traits drove Nin mad, even to the point where she found herself not going TO each man, but FLEEING from each. And yet, it was a lifestyle she maintained for the rest of her life, and a story that is only now exposed to the public in full, in Nin’s own words.

Rupert Pole, 1950s

Herron also discusses the back-stories of Trapeze, including the fact that Nin was increasingly excluded from the American literary world, and her work was chastised by friend and foe alike to the point where she was ready to give up on her writing career altogether.

Also discussed is one of the major supporting characters in Nin’s life at the time—James (Jim) Leo Herilhy, who would later achieve fame with his novels, including Midnight Cowboy. Herlihy not only supported Nin’s writing at the very time when no one else did, he also know Guiler and Pole well enough to give Nin objective and honest feedback on her relationships with them in his eloquent correspondence to her, which is quoted in this podcast.

]]>http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2017/05/anais-nin-podcast-26-trapeze-the-unexpurgated-diary-of-anais-nin-1947-1955/feed/0Podcast 25: Anaïs Nin’s Sense of Style with Gwendolyn Michelhttp://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2017/03/podcast-25-anais-nins-sense-of-style-with-gwendolyn-michel/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=podcast-25-anais-nins-sense-of-style-with-gwendolyn-michel
http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/2017/03/podcast-25-anais-nins-sense-of-style-with-gwendolyn-michel/#commentsTue, 21 Mar 2017 16:13:41 +0000http://anaisninblog.skybluepress.com/?p=3635We often discuss Anaïs Nin’s writing, her love life, her life choices, but we rarely delve into her incredible, creative sense of style—her clothing, her interior designs, even what perfumes she wore. This podcast aims to rectify this. Today I speak with Gwendolyn Michel, PhD candidate and recipient of the Stella Blum Research Grant from the Costume Society of America about how Anaïs Nin’s creativity was far-reaching. When you think about the scope of it, it’s really incredible. Not only did she dress exotically, she oftentimes designed her own clothing, which was occasionally plagiarized by various couturiers. She designed furniture and interior schemes that awed those who experienced them—her apartment at 47 blvd Suchet in Parisand her fabled Louveciennes houseare but two examples.

Listen as we discuss how these creations came to be and what has happened to them. Anaïs Nin’s clothes are still around, in various hands, each article a treasure. Gwendolyn Michel has done plenty of detective work and has made some fascinating discoveries—for example, did you know what happened to the dress Nin word in Henry Miller’s favorite photograph of her, or where a shawl she wore when she was an artist’s model ended up? Find out here.